


glad and big

by gloss



Category: Captain America
Genre: Come Home Steve, M/M, gratuitous shippiness, post-Cap#25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"unless statistics lie he was/more brave than me:more blond than you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	glad and big

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers/setting: Very vague ones for Captain America v.5 #37, explicit ones for #25.

Sam won't lie. Over the years, he's had his problems with Bucky Barnes. Whether that was the boy, the legend, the best friend Steve ever had, it didn't matter. Whoever it was, Sam had no room in his life for a ghost.

So he thought.

Buck's nothing like Steve. His costume only refers glancingly to Steve's; it's at once darker and shinier than Steve's ever was. His eyes are sharp and narrow, gunmetal blue where Steve's were...wider. Warmer, to be sure.

He moves a little more choppily, his angles slightly more acute, like the world is tilted more for him than anyone else. He's *sharper* in a fight, too, slicing his hands (both of them, metal and skin) against throats, through the air, into kidneys. He seems to welcome hand-to-hand. Maybe decades of sniper-distance made him lonely.

Out of costume, too, he is no Steve. He has none of Steve's warmth, the irresistible engagement of his gaze and smile.

Steve made you -- made *Sam* -- open up, just by listening, just by being. This guy, though. He's a locked vault in a dynamited building, impossible to find, let alone open. He twists away, all the welcome of a fight knotting up and reversing.

Except Sam's always specialized -- despite himself, against his better judgment -- in hopeless cases. Bucky may be nothing like Steve, but he's also _of_ Steve. Sam suspects Bucky'd say the same of him.

Steve was gentle, and kind; they both could use a little kindness. Those who lack, his mama always said, they give up, or they make do. And neither of them knows what it means to quit.

Bucky's a skinny bastard, fishbelly pale in the streetlight haze. He's got muscle roped round his bones and snugged up tight like he never got quite enough to eat, not when it counted. Sam knows that look and correctly guessed Bucky's rapid, industrious method of eating, left hand protecting the plate, right hand shovelling up the food regular as a machine.

"Depression-era training, I s'pose," Steve had said once when someone teased him for doing the same thing.

"Every era _poor_ person training," Sam'd replied. He got one of Steve's sadder smiles, downcast eyes and sloping shoulders, in response.

Bucky wipes clean his mouth and lets the empty milk bottle rattle on the counter. It's late and they've got an early morning, but Bucky's skin is warm against Sam's. His fingertips trace the corkscrew curls of Sam's chest hair and his clean, milky breath breaks against the side of Sam's neck. There's no room between them, not when they're this close.


End file.
